She walks to the edge, examining them as best she can without taking down the barrier. It's pretty permeable to the senses, though - the only question is distance, and whether she dares extend her own workings over the edge.

"Good morning," she calls, softly.

The pair of spirit birds don't seem particularly complex or mighty. They seem like... Birds. They tweet and sing, conveying a message thereby.

"Is it? Perhaps for you. It is just another morning for us."

"The deadwood box is uninteresting, but you disturbed it..."

She smiles. "It's an abandoned nest of my kind. I'm afraid I'm rather large, and wouldn't fit at all in a tree's hollow."

"If it isn't a good morning now - and perhaps it's not - then I certainly hope to make it a little better than it was."

"Your kind is not very safe around here. We're fast enough to escape the hungering ones, but you can't fly."

"I want to know how you're keeping things out, I want it for my nest."

"It's very hard, and it took me a very long time to learn, sadly. I can set up a small barrier around your nest that you can pass, but it'll fade in strength over the years."

"What are the hungering ones?"

"I don't really know. There's two kinds of hungering ones. Some live in places for your kind. They're angry, sometimes. Jealous. Resentful. Hateful. Some live in the world like normal creatures. Those are just hungry."

"Sometimes your kind comes and kills them but that hasn't happened recently. Fire and screams."

"Has anyone ever spoken to a hungering one?"

"They speak sometimes. It's always a predation tactic. Always."

She frowns.

There are spirits like that in her world... But they're mostly - kept back. Very, very aggressively.

It sounds like they took over, here.

"Thank you," she says, sincerely. "How do you know a creature is a hungering one?"

"...It usually seems obvious to us."

"Misshapen form, dark flesh, stench of rot."

"You're going to ash-guard our nests in exchange for these answers, right?"

"Yes, I will. I promise."

"I wonder why we know things about your kind. We're birds."

"Do we even know things about her?"

"Sure. She's wearing clothes for the cold and decoration and... Something about not mating."

"Huh. I guess we do."

"Those things are true," she says, a little bit amused.

"I think something is wrong with us. I can't remember what, but we're not supposed to be this way."

"What feels the most wrong?"

"We're too smart."

"If we were birds we shouldn't be this smart."

"It feels like we're lost."

"Do you think you used to be something else?"

"...Maybe."

"It sounds right. Are we really sparrows, Kus?"

"Maybe. I don't know..."

"Is it possible you used to be shaped like me?"

"No, no, no."

"Definitely impossible."

"We didn't have wings or feathers though."

"And our beaks were like yours."

"But we KNOW we definitely were nothing like your kind and the hungering ones."

"It's obvious."

She hums. "Did you have fur?"

"Just... On our heads..."

"A little more."

"Oh, right."

"Where else was the fur?"

"Sort of all over but very thin."

She hums. "Did you have more on your chest or face?"